April’s Featured Game: ARCADEA DEVELOPER(S): AishinENGINE: RPGMaker VX Ace  GENR

April’s Featured Game: ARCADEA

DEVELOPER(S): Aishin
ENGINE: RPGMaker VX Ace  
GENRE: Fantasy, Adventure, Puzzle
WARNINGS:  N/A
SUMMARY: In the world of Arcadea, people can accomplish their dreams. How? Through video games of course! Everybody who lives in Arcadea has a special arcade machine they can visit in their dreams that lets them fulfill their strongest wishes. Whether it’s to go on an adventure, or make friends, or fall in love, or solve a mystery, or completely start a new life, there’s a game made just for them..
The game follows Maisie, a new arrival to Arcadea. She’s not very interested in all this gaming stuff; her only goal is to find an important person. But along the way, she can’t help but be roped into other people’s problems. She also can’t help that the arcade machines seem to glitch around her. A lot.

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! 
*Hello everyone! My name is Aishin and I’m the developer of ARCADEA! I have been in the community for about 8 years. I started working with RPGMaker in 2014 and played around with some horror game concepts that never came to fruition. I realized that drawing dark or creepy things and trying to scare people wasn’t really up my alley. After failing to make a horror game, I attempted a more happy and relaxing concept and was much more satisfied with the results.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially?
*Aishin: ARCADEA is a fantasy story that mainly involves adventuring through different strange lands, solving puzzles, and doing quests. In between the adventuring segments, the player plays little mini-games on arcade machines that act as foreshadowing as well as introspective character explorations. It’s a game about the safety as well as the troubles of escapism. It’s also games within a game and that’s always fun right?
My initial inspiration was from seeing other RPG Maker games. Being in the community and seeing other games being developed made me strive to make one of my own!

How long have you been working on your project?
*Aishin: A little less than one year so far. The story and characters have been through many revisions and changes. I’m happy to say that I am fully satisfied at the final revision and I will be bringing the world to life as best as I can~

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project?
*Aishin: My game was influenced by fairy tales, mainly Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid. I also was heavily inspired by the MOTHER series and its quirky humor, as well as very meta games such as OneShot, Libretta, and Undertale. Also To the Moon, as it was the first RPG Maker game I have played that was not horror. Games that, after playing them, makes you kind of sit there… in wonder.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them?  
*Aishin: The biggest challenge was actually finding time to sit down and work on the game. I’m about to finish my third year of pharmacy school and the workload leaves me too tired to even pick up my tablet pen sometimes. However, every moment I actually do spend on the game is very satisfying and I am getting faster and more efficient with everything: spriting, mapping, drawing, eventing, checking for bugs, etc. I’m just waiting for school to be over so I can start putting my all into this game!
Oh and also debugging. Oh man do I hate script conflicts.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept?
*Aishin: Many many MANY aspects. Originally, the game wasn’t even going to have arcade machines! Crazy stuff.
After the addition of the mini-games, everything just…happened. The characters all got fleshed out backstories, the main character actually became a CHARACTER rather than a player’s avatar, more games and puzzles were made, the world became more dense with ‘stuff’….
The story became simpler. But the actual themes and concepts around the story became more real.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team?
*Aishin: I’m the sole developer of the game. I have a couple of friends that act as my beta testers. They also help with edits, proofreading, and ideas. I am planning on finding a composer in the future for music compositions (the one thing I can’t do by myself :c).

What was the best part of developing the game?
*Aishin: For me, it’s seeing everything coming together in action! Seeing my character sprites moving around on a map I made, saying dialogue that I wrote is such a fulfilling feeling. And making the maps as beautiful as I can is pretty fun!
And then a bug happens and you just sit in a corner and cry.
loljk

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently?
*Aishin: I wish I learned Ruby before starting this project. I had to learn as I go but unfortunately that lead to random script issues. I had to request a friend’s help to solve them and luckily it was nothing too bad. The good news is, I am now able to resolve script conflicts on my own! (And with google)

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is?
*Aishin: This will probably be a stand-alone game. The story and characters have a definite beginning and end. I feel like there’s no need to expand on this world any further.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release?
*Aishin: I would like to see people play it. Whether they like it or not, I hope I get some critique on the game. It would be nice if people really enjoyed playing it c:
Of course, more sleep is another thing to look forward to.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? 
*Aishin: GAME BREAKING BUGS. Also I really hope there aren’t any weird story plot holes…

Question from last month’s featured dev: What are some practical tricks you’ve learned in RPG Maker that novice (or even advanced) developers might not know?
*Aishin: - If you want to make the screen pan, make your character transparent and have them walk where it’s needed (have a dummy sprite act as your character in the meantime).
- Take advantage of the addition and subtract effects of pictures when doing lighting for maps (especially parallax maps). Also you can have the light or shadows fade in and out by using the 'Move Picture’ event and adjusting opacity.
- USE THE ’\!’ BEFORE ANY DIALOGUE CHOICES THE PLAYER HAS TO MAKE. This prevents the player from accidentally clicking through too fast and picking an answer that they don’t want! I can’t tell you how many endings I messed up on getting because of this.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs?
*Aishin: Definitely try! I would start with a free program like RPGMaker Lite and play around with it. I think what turns most people away is feeling that the RPG Maker program is very complex. But it’s actually pretty easy to pick up on!
Also, starting small is very helpful. Making a ginormous, long game immediately is pretty daunting, especially if you’re inexperienced (although some people have managed to do it). I would at least know a little bit about events and scripts before jumping into a huge project.
And if in the end, you feel that making games isn’t for you, you at least get some experience and knowledge out of it. As well as a greater appreciation for games and the work/process that goes into game development!

We mods would like to thank Aishin for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved! 

Remember to check out ARCADEA if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum